The numbers involved in the Bhopal gas disaster trial are astonishing and depressing. And we’re not only referring to the thousands of people killed and left with chronic illnesses because of their exposure to a deadly gas from the Union Carbide India Ltd. plant in their city more than 25 years ago. We’re also referring to the long months and years eaten up by every step of the legal process.

According to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation agency, it took three years to initially investigate the incident. Then the legal proceedings stalled for a while as a result of the Supreme Court-directed $470 million settlement between India and Union Carbide in 1989. As part of that settlement, court documents show the court ordered that “all criminal proceedings related to and arising out of the disaster shall stand quashed wherever pending.”

On a petition from the Central Bureau of Investigation, the criminal case was revived three years later, according to the agency. The prosecution and the defense fought over the appropriate charges for the Indian defendants for another three years, until the Supreme Court ordered that the charges be reduced to “causing death by negligence” in 1996, the agency added. And there you have a dozen years gone.

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After the Bhopal chief judicial magistrate brought the revised charges the following year, it took the agency until December 2005 to present the prosecution’s case. It took a year and a half to take the statements of the accused and another two years to record the statements of eight defense witnesses. That was completed by Jan. 21 this year, after which final arguments took place. On Monday, the Bhopal court found seven former officials of UCIL guilty of “causing death by negligence,” a charge that carries a maximum two-year prison term.

Most Indians, used as they are to the labyrinthine processes of their legal system, felt it had performed even worse than usual given the tragic nature of the case involved.

“The courts are functioning with bullock-cart technology in a supersonic age,” former senior government lawyer K.T.S. Tulsi told the news channel NDTV in the wake of the verdict. “With bullock-cart technology this is what you get — 26 years.”

Even India’s Minister for Law and Justice M. Veerappa Moily seemed upset by how very, very long it took for the victims of the gas leak to get a verdict.

In recent years India has set up special courts to process cases so serious that they can’t be entrusted to the plodding regular system. The trial of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the lone captured gunman in the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, took place in a court like that. It was speedy.

“This trial started effectively about a year ago and within a year we have brought it to a close,” said Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram after Mr. Kasab was found guilty.

But if fast-track courts get set up for what appear to be the more egregious cases — terrorism, sexual assaults on foreign tourists, and maybe one day major industrial disasters — will that further deplete the regular legal system? After all, the judges and attendant legal personnel have to come from somewhere. Could a mushrooming “fast-track” system siphon off judges, already in short supply, and leave the main legal system even less responsive than it already is?

Not necessarily.

“The solution is that you have to appoint people,” said corporate lawyer Ravi Nath, partner at the Rajinder Narain & Co. law firm. “We have got retired judges in good health who are happy to serve on an ad-hoc basis.”

Mr. Nath also said court cases get dragged out because of the scourge of frequent adjournments, sometimes legitimate, but often requested because the prosecution is not properly prepared or because it suits the defense.

“Why should he not delay the evil day if he thinks there will be an evil day?” said Mr. Nath.

Judges need to be harsher with parties requesting adjournments for frivolous reasons, he said.

“It is like some excuse put forward to a schoolmaster by a student and it’s up to the schoolmaster how he wishes to chastise the student, or accept it or not accept it,” said Mr. Nath. “Judges have to have the spine to say no.”

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